Education & Access

For Greenlight, improving the quality of life in Wilson includes ensuring that children have access to the high capacity broadband that unleashes opportunity.

Starting at the community's higher education institutions, Greenlight provides Wilson Community College 100 Mb symmetrical service on the main campus and a 100 Mb metro net connection for police training, while the Barton College residence halls receive 1 Gigabit symmetrical service, with 100 Mb metro net service pulsing through the main campus and to two off-campus locations.

Leading the nation in school connection capacity, Greenlight has connected all Wilson County public schools to its gigabit fiber network, providing 10 Gigabit internet service to the administration building and 1 Gigabit internet to every public school building.

Since 2014, Greenlight began providing free 100 Mbps symmetrical internet service to two after school programs, Save-a-Youth and Sharing Positive Outcomes together (S.P.O.T.).  At the old Walnut Elementary School, the St. John's Save a Youth Center accesses this high powered internet to provide digital training, including coding, to almost 300 students in its summer camp program, and another 350 students directly after school. Likewise SPOT has been recognized for its advanced training approach by being awarded a state grant to create 21^st century classrooms at its Tarboro Street site (the BB&T Youth Center). SPOT supervisors recognize the ability of young children to be far faster at learning digital technology than their teachers, so Greenlight internet is linked to lap tops (like Chromebooks, IPads, Kindles) that are placed in the hands of the kids and they then teach each other. Students engage in Google Classroom, access learning tools like Khan Academy, Engenuity and Prodigy, where streaming online video content on HD displays using these devices would be "simply not possible" without Greenlight service, according to SPOT's IT Director. This after school program benefits more than 300 students, and was showcased in a national blog featuring stories of local self reliance.

Greenlight also facilitates full community access to its ultra-high speed service by providing free 100Mbps symmetrical service to the Wilson County library where patrons say they have used it for video job interviews, finding jobs and even applying for healthcare.